Maitland's Moment: Turning Nova Scotia’s Forests into Ships for the Global Commodity Trade in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

The intersection of local environments and global mobility transformed Maitland, Nova Scotia, and many other small villages on the Bay of Fundy into boomtowns between the 1860s and the 1880s. Maitland’s location at the mouth of a river flowing into the Bay of Fundy, along with an abundant supply of spruce and a growing global demand for the low-cost transportation provided by large wooden sailing ships, facilitated the rising economic importance of this village and the region. Unlike other products that galvanized much of the Canadian extractive economy in the nineteenth century, Maitland’s spruce trees were not shipped to Britain as raw lumber. Instead, local businessmen and labourers transformed them into inexpensive sailing ships for transporting bulk commodities around the globe. Maitland’s rise as a shipbuilding centre coincided with a golden age of resource-led global economic development